Fathers 4 Justice
(F4J)a pressure group that originated in
Britain to crusade for father's rights, especially child custody and
access rights in divorcehas just landed on American shores with
the creation of F4J-US.
What happens next may tell us as much about society's post-9/11 attitude toward
social reform as it does about father's rights.

What do F4J and its international chapters demand? F4J essentially seeks
the removal of any anti-male bias from the family court system. The
specifics include a wide range of measures, including the court
enforcement of visitation orders and the linking of child support
payments to visitation rights.

Why would the repetition of well-aired demands tell us anything new about
society's post-9/11 attitudes? Because the strategy F4J favors hasn't
been really tested here since then.

Father's rights advocates and their opponents have waged a public strategy
war, to be sure. But their weapons of choice have generally been a
flood of contradictory studies, re-interpreted data, personal tales
of injustice, accusations, and blasts of fury.

F4J advocates "peaceful non-violent direct action based on the
Greenpeace model with a dash of humour thrown in for good measure."
In Britain, the group is famous for high-profile stunts that taunt and
disrupt authority. For example, last September a F4Jer dressed as Batman scaled
Buckingham Palace.
Standing for over 5-hours on a ledge next to the Palace's main balcony, he unfurled a
huge banner
reading "Super Dads of Fathers 4 Justice". Batman was arrested "for suspicion of causing
criminal damage."

Plans for similar but unspecified "guerrilla" acts in the United
States have been announced. It is not clear how aggressive the
Stateside actions will be.

Jamil Jabr, head of F4J-US, has been quoted in the Telegraph
as saying,
"We will try to maintain the audacity of the stunts…but
if anyone tried that [the batman stunt] at the White House, they
would be shot."

But the same article quotes Matt O'Connor, F4J's founder, as declaring,
"We are planning a massive stunt in New York which will catch
everyone by surprise…It will be more spectacular than anything
we've done in the UK so far and if all goes well we will hopefully be
catapulted into infamy."

Given past action in the UK, that's quite a statement.

Last May, for example, two F4Jers threw
condoms full of unidentified powder
at Tony Blair, hitting the Prime
Minister as he addressed the House of Commons. The substance was
later identified as flour that had been dyed purple; the men were
charged with
the relatively mild offence of "using threatening, abusive or
insulting words or behaviour". They were fined but served no
time in prison. In the U.S., the two might have been shot on the
spot.

Not just the American authorities but the American public is likely to
respond more harshly as well. It is not likely that New Yorkers would tolerate a re-run of
the London publicity stunt
by which 'Spiderman' occupied a crane that 'caused' police to stop traffic flowing across the heavily-traveled
Tower Bridge
from early October 31st to November 4th.
A British court later cleared Spiderman of charges because the
closing had resulted from police decisions and not his actions. In
the U.S., outraged New Yorkers might not let a Spiderman who closed
the Brooklyn Bridge reach the court system at all.

It is not that civil disobedience or non-violent resistance have deeper
roots in Britain than in North America. The United States was born
through acts of both. Throughout American history, reformers and
radicals have addressed social problems through civil disobedience
and non-violent resistance.

Anti-slavery activists flouted the law by harboring run-aways; the most famous of
them (William Lloyd Garrison) called the Constitution's sanction of
slavery "an agreement with hell, a covenant with death" and
urged non-violent resistance. 19th century labor advocates
staged strikes that paralyzed entire regions and industries; they
burned factory owners in effigy. Black civil rights activists sat at
"whites only" lunch counters. During Vietnam, the anti-war
movement barraged the 'system' with flamboyant tactics. Perhaps the
most famous one occurred when the Yippies threw dollar bills from the
balcony of the New York Stock Exchange and effectively closed down
trading as brokers scrambled for the money.

It is an open question: will civil disobedience and non-violent
resistance be allowed to shape American society as it has in the
past? Or will such strategies be forced to operate within narrower
and less effective limits?

F4J-US may provide the answer.

Or, rather, reaction by authorities may be the answer.

That reaction can be gauged, in part, by an incident in January. Two
members of the British group visited NYC to help organize F4J-US and
to scout the city for possible actions. They were followed everywhere. Jabr
described
one member of the surveillance team, "We learned later
that he was the head of New York's terrorism intelligence branch. He
had FBI connections and orders to make sure that there would be no
Buckingham Palace-type incidents."

On the other hand, the father's rights radicals apparently went out for
a beer with the men assigned to watch them.

I wish F4J-US well; I believe its cause is just. I also wish it
prudence because I believe post-9/11 America is likely to stomp on
anything that vaguely hints of violence against an official or the
disruption of infrastructure.